and normally the UofM grad/student talking the most trash turns out to be from UofM * Dearborn or Flint. Am I correct?
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Both school are great the only thing that matters is what you do after college. A diploma from Harvard means jack if you are living in a trailer in Hazeltucky.

And Dearborn is less selective than MSU? Being a much smaller school than MSU does not make UM-D a less reputable institution. As someone who has been a student at both A2 and Dearborn campuses I can attest to the lack of profound disparities between curriculum difficulty at the two campuses (of course this depends on field of study, I would imagine).

I agree with your point below, but simply know your facts about the "satellite" campuses before you choose to downplay them as not worthy.

I agree that this is a dumb f-ing argument. Nonetheless, going on a board with a bunch of Michigan students/grads and saying that none of us beat his standardized test scores is pretty stupid. I know people who post on this board that I know, flat out, beat whatever MSU guy got on his tests, no matter what they were (unless, of course, his were also perfect).

No matter how strong I am, I'm not going into the Cowboy's weight room and guarantee I can bench more than anyone.

Fair enough, but the SAT and ACT serve one purpose only. That's to get into college. The better score you get, the better college you can get into. What good do those lofty scores do you if you go to a school where everyone else did half as well?

That's like saying "I just paid $40K for a new A4," and someone else saying "I paid $40K too, but I got a Ford Focus because I like it better."

I told you, I really don't care if I sound like a prick, this is just my opinion. Don't make it seem like education from every school is the same, otherwise no one would work hard and pay the big bucks for the big name schools if they were just as good. Nor would they put themselves through the rigors of the competition. Some people overdo the value of the name on your degree, but saying "education is education" is just a silly claim. There's a reason resumes have a section to list where you got your degree; if employers didn't care, they wouldn't ask. And I'm sure you think all the same employers and recruiters show up for career day at MSU that do at UM too, right?

As for the money, if there is one thing worth investing in it's your future. Over time, the difference is negligible.

Some people go to school to learn, some go to make money, some go to start a career. It's not my place to judge which, but I'm willing to bet that someone who went to get a certain education is not likely the kind of person that would offer $100 to anyone that beat his test scores in response to some other jackass offering $10 for the same.

And while I agree that ideally the actual education matters more than the school name on the degree, there's a reason that a lot of firms target certain schools for candidates. We were targeting health care MBAs, and we started by posting at what we judged as the top 5 schools.

Bringing this back to college football, if you want to find a superstar, do you start with a field of 3* prospects as judged by others when you could start with a field of 5* prospects? The job market is no different from CFB recruiting, top talent is pursued and desired while lesser talent has fewer offers. Also just like recruiting, some 5* underperform, and some 3* underperform, but what group would you rather be picking from?

You don't get to pick your genetics, you do get to pick what school you go to. Pre-disposition to athletics based on genetic composition is distributed by nature. The distribution of academics at UM vs MSU is man-made.

Mom went to State and older brother or cousin (whichever it was) went to OSU. Probably would have made for some pretty interesting Thanksgiving dinners if he had gone to UM. Good luck to the kid, he is going to need it.

Its a joke. I'll try to find the article again, but it did say he backed off the last time. I think the deathbacker would have fit him perfectly, but lets face despite his comments about the prom outfit not meaning anything he stll committed to them. Everyone knew he was going to EL.

....well, I'll be honest, I have no problem with him going to State. College football is more interesting when your biggest rivals are good. There was not much too exciting with watching State get rolled by Michigan every year earlier this decade. I prefer that the big rivals (Little Brother, Notre Dame, Ohio State) be at the top of their game. It makes it even more sweet when Michigan wins, and more palatable when Michigan loses.

The happiest thing is that we can stop talking about this kid, as duly mentioned before. I'll take RR's stance on this "I will only talk about kids that play for Michigan." Or want to play for Michigan.

Not all five-stars pan out and not all three stars are horrible, so we'll have to see which one he is - boom or bust.

Both school are great... the ultimate argument from a state grad. let's just call 'em equal. while we're at it, let's just call stanford equal to UM b/c well, they're both great schools. There is a big difference b/t State and UM and if you can't see that... well maybe you should be at state.

A diploma from Harvard means jack if...

Some resumes float to the top during the hiring process. Those with "Harvard University" or, "University of Michigan" tend to do just that. Others, not so much.

There's no point in even debating this. State has no argument and wins if we so much as even debate it. Fuck it. State has a couple of programs that are better for certain things, but overall who cares?

1. UM is the best school in Michigan by every objective measure. The students there are objectively smarter than every other school in Michigan, as a group. Graduates are afforded better and more prestigious opportunities.

2. Some cross-admits choose MSU over UM. The most common reason for doing so is scholarship money or MSU's offering of some major that UM does not offer. A few will choose MSU based on "quality of life" factors such as closeness to home, feel, or whatever.

3. Those that chose MSU over UM to maximize future opportunities/earning capacity without regard for the factors I named above made a mistake. Pure and simple.

so that you don't get some of the ridiculous arguments set out earlier in the thread. Obviously, my argument holds true at every level of GPA.

Top 5% at UM > top 5% at MSU
Top 25% at UM > top 25% at MSU
Top 50% at UM > top 50% at MSU
Top 95% at UM > top 95% at MSU

And so on. Hopefully you were just being intentionally obtuse and argumentative rather than just lacking the capacity to understand that you just made an irrelevant point that has no bearing on anything I said.

Are you actually trying to say that class size alone explains the disparity in the quality of students at the two schools? That's just...wow. You can't be serious. If quality of student body is a function of class size, why aren't the smallest schools the most prestigious? Try thinking out your arguments before posting them.

By the way, I'm not sure why you keep insisting that I was in the bottom 50% of my class. Not only is that inaccurate, it's completely irrelevant to the discussion. I've been out of school for years and I'm doing fine.

Think about it. MSU needs ~40% more students just to keep the same average as UM. Given a normal bell curve distribution of students, it's simply not feasible for a large university such as MSU to ever stack up in a top % vs. top % comparison. This makes your analysis, well, obvious.

Being out of school and doing fine is also irrelevant to the discussion.

Do you know what that means? Anyways, I think you just don't understand my argument. I'm saying pick a UM student that is top 5% of his class - he is smarter than a MSU top 5% student. Pick a UM top 35% student - he too is smarter than a MSU top 35% kid.

Quantity of students has no bearing on the discussion. MSU is not at a severe disadvantage because they have more students. Otherwise, smaller schools would outperform larger ones, no? UM is still a pretty big school and is better than every other school in Michigan, including every smaller school.

To use another data point, UM law school has over 1100 students and is ranked 9 (PRR would be proud) while MSU law school has 812 students and is an unranked tier 3 shithole. So OMG UM filled 300 more spots and is vastly superior to MSU? Harvard has 1700 students and is still 1-2 in the nation? UNPOSSIBLE!

The rest of your argument is a straw man. I agree with those statements and never argued otherwise, except the first sentence. Even if it weren't a land-grant university, MSU is at a disadvantage. It is harder to recruit 36000 talented students than it is to recruit 26000. Is this concept really that hard to grasp?

Are you serious? Did you even pass statistics? Have you any idea how these things are calculated? This is probably a complete waste of my time, so by me even doing so, you win, but this is on the off-chance you actually are that ignorant.

If you have a number set of 1,2,3,4,5, the average is 3. If you have 1,1,2,2,3,3,4,4,5,5, the average is still 3. The size of the set has nothing to do with it.

And for the record, I didn't improve the average GPA at Michigan, because I didn't go. I got accepted there and went to an even better school.

Again, the only people who would brag about university averages are those well below it.

This makes less sense than zero. By what do you judge a university if not things like average SAT score of incoming students, average class sizes, endowment per student, and so forth? Rankings? I mean, we could play that game if you wanted to. And why are you bringing in things like sample sizes if averages aren't relevant?

Edit: despite appearances, post is directed not at Captain Obvious, but at the MSU dude whose sole purpose on the board so far seems to be passive-aggressively arguing that U-M is not a better school than MSU while never claiming the reverse.

It's hard to tell if he's a troll just fucking with everybody or really just lacks any shred of critical reasoning ability. I can't imagine any college-educated person trying to make some of these arguments with a straight face.